Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and educated at Brandeis University and in Paris. On her return to the United States, she became active in the civil rights campaign. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, she moved to Los Angeles and completed her Masters degree under Herbert Marcuse. In 1971 she was arrested and charged with kidnapping, murder and conspiracy. She was later acquitted on all charges. She published an autobiography in 1974.
William Humphreys Dayas, pianist and composer, was born in New York of English parents in 1863 and orphaned at an early age. He studied organ and composition, and travelled to Germany in 1881 where he eventually became a pupil of Franz Liszt. Although he was a gifted pianist, he was not totally comfortable on the stage; he devoted himself to teaching. He taught at several conservatories throughout Europe and in 1896 was appointed principal professor of pianoforte at the Royal Manchester College of Music in England. He championed the music of Liszt, as well as publishing a number of his own compositions, primarily in Germany. He died in 1903 in Manchester.
Jack de Hart grew up in Lethbridge, Alberta, the son of J.B. de Hart and his wife. As a school boy he represented Lethbridge schools at the Coronation in 1937. He joined the military in 1943 and served until 1971, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in Korea. De Hart also served as Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, Federal District (Ottawa) in the 1980s. He died on 6 November 1992. A bursary was set up in his memory by the Royal Canadian Artillery Association. He served as president of this association in 1978-79. His wife Marjory died in 1968 – she was the daughter of Alfred W. and Edith Wright.
R.H. De Pencier served in the Canadian Contingent of the South African Constabulary in the South African War. From Montreal, De Pencier was part of the Volunteer Rifles and received the Queen’s Medal. His regimental number was 1662.
Donna Marie “Daisy” DeBolt, an accomplished singer-songwriter, was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on July 19, 1945 to a musical family. DeBolt’s maternal grandfather, Percy Highfield (1882-1946), studied music in England and played violin for a symphony orchestra. After immigrating to Canada in 1910, he taught music in Foxwarren, Manitoba, and in residential schools in Kenora, Ontario. DeBolt’s mother, (Helen) Marjorie (Highfield) DeBolt (1916-1998), was a musician and music teacher, and played violin with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Her father, Donald DeBolt (d.1979), played banjo, chromatic harmonica, and the blues harp.
As a teenager, DeBolt studied jazz guitar with Lenny Breau (1941-1984). In 1965, she moved to Toronto, Ontario to pursue a music career as a folk musician. She met Allen Fraser in 1968 and the two formed the musical duo Fraser & DeBolt. They released two albums: Fraser & DeBolt With Ian Guenther, in 1971, and Fraser & DeBolt With Pleasure, in 1973. DeBolt and Fraser parted ways in the mid-1970s. DeBolt continued to write and perform as a solo artist and to collaborate with other musicians and poets. Her solo works include Soulstalking (1992), Live Each Day with Soul (2002), and Lovers and Fantasies (2004), an album featuring two songs by author Michael Ondaatje.
In addition to being a folk singer, DeBolt was well versed in blues, jazz and reggae, and played mandolin, accordion and guitar. Over the course of her career, DeBolt toured and played at festivals across Canada, performed in several theatre productions, composed for Ballet Ys, and wrote film scores for the National Film Board. She had a son, Jake DeBolt, with poet Robert Dickson (1944-2007). DeBolt died on October 4, 2011 in Toronto.
James M. Deaubin was a merchant in Amherstburg, Ont. He ran both a general store and acted as a wharfinger, supplying ships. He was born around 1817.
Guy Philip Debenham (MD and FRCS), surgeon and engraver, was born in Scarborough, England on 27 January 1923, the son of Leonard Debenham and Anna (née Archer-Shee). He was educated at Stonyhurst College, and at the age of 21 he graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. Between 1945 and 1948 he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Middle East and was awarded the Palestine Medal for his service. After emigrating to Canada in 1958, he practiced medicine at several locations (Bassano, Alberta, and in Parry Sound and Hagersville, Ont.). In 1965 he and his family moved to St. Catharines where he worked as a surgeon at the Hotel Dieu Hospital and St. Catharines General Hospital. In the early 1970s he moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake. In 1990 he was the recipient of the Glen Sawyer Award from the Ontario Medical Association. He retired from the medical profession in 1991. Married twice, first to Marjorie (died in the early 1980s) and then to Diane Wheatley, he died on 1 December 2002.
Debenham was also a dedicated wood engraver. He took up engraving in the 1950s. Many of his works were exhibited at the annual Wayzgoose in Grimsby, Ont. and elsewhere in Canada, the UK, and Japan. He printed all his work on his 1862 Albion press which was donated posthumously to the MacKenzie Heritage Printery in Queenston, Ont. Debenham’s imprint was the Larchwood Press, which issued booklets, cards, and calendars. Gillian Debenham’s Piccolo’s Progress (1970), a children’s story written by Guy Debenham’s sister, is the first imprint of this fine press, published in an edition of 100 numbered copies.
John Stoughton Dennis was a surveyor, soldier, and public servant. Born in Kingston, Dennis had a long surveying career in Ontario and Manitoba, as well as serving as a militia officer, and public servant. He was appointed Canada’s first surveyor general in 1871. In addition, he was an active entrepreneur. The documents in this collection are related to a timber felling venture on the Magnetawan River near Parry Sound, Ontario.
Lester E. Denonn was born in 1901, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y. He studied philosophy at New York University (B.A.) and Cornell University (M.A.). After graduating from New York University with a degree in law in 1928, he began his career as a lawyer specializing in banking law, which ended with his retirement from Simpson Thatcher and Barlett in 1973. He wrote many reviews for the American Bar Association journal and lectured widely on legal problems. He married Bess Schwinner and the couple had two children, a son Andrew, and a daughter, Alice Epstein.
Denonn edited The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell (1951), Bertrand Russell's Dictionary of Mind, Matter, and Morals (1952), and then with Robert E. Egner, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (1961). He also edited The Wit and Wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1953). Denonn planned to complete a bibliography of Russell and to assist himself in this task collected a large library of books by and about Russell. He was an active member of the Bertrand Russell Society. He died on 12 June 1985.
Born in 1933, Victor DiBello was a musician and conductor. In 1950, after playing in the East York Collegiate Orchestra, he founded the Pro Arte Orchestra of Toronto, originally an amateur group but later becoming a professional ensemble. As well as conducting the Pro Arte Orchestra, he was the conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic from 1959 to 1962 and Music Coordinator, later Music Director, at the Stratford (Ont.) Festival in the 1960s.
David Diamant is the pseudonym of David Erlich, a Jewish communist and committed member of the underground resistance during World War II.
Sarah Dixon, poet of Canterbury, was very born in 1671 at Rochester, Kent. Poems on Several Occasions is her only published book. For further information on Dixon, see Messenger, Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent (2001)
Farzana Doctor is a Canadian writer, activist, and psychotherapist. Her writing has been described as contemporary literary fiction, with a hint of magic realism. Her books explore themes of loss, diasporic identity and the immigrant experience, LGBT rights, and others.
Her second novel, Six Metres of Pavement won the Dayne Ogilvie Grant and the Lambda Literary Award in 2012, as well as being shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award.
Doctor continues to have a private practice and lives with her partner in Toronto.
Bruce Doherty was probably born during the 1890s in Mono, Ontario, where his father Joshua grew up and farmed after arriving from Ireland as a child. The family moved to Orangeville around 1909. Doherty served with the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, training at Armour Heights Camp in Toronto. Camp Mohawk in Deseronto and in Benbrook, Texas, the winter quarters of the RCF after the United States entered the war. Doherty survived the war but his date of death is not known.
Andy Donato was born in Scarborough, Ont. in 1937. He graduated from Danforth Technical School in 1955 and in 1961 he began working at the Toronto Telegram. After the Telegram went under in 1971, he joined the Toronto Sun. He retired from the Sun in 1996 but continued to publish cartoons there on a free-lance basis. His cartoons feature his signature “bird”. Some of his most famous work was done during the Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark years in Ottawa. His work has won many awards including a National Newspaper Award. His work has also been published in book collections and has been exhibited in Toronto, New York, Johannesburg and London He has served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the Canadian Editorial Cartoonists.
Wallace McClung (Bud) Donnelly was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan on 15 October 1920, the son of Jesse and Mable V. Donnelly. He was a student at Kirkland Lake Collegiate in 1932-34. His family moved to Hamilton, Ontario in 1934 where he attended Westdale Secondary School. At McMaster University he studied sciences and enrolled in the Canadian Officers' Training Corps.
In February 1942, he went overseas with the Royal Canadian Dragoons, achieving the rank of Captain. From February to December 1944, he was a wireless instructor at Britain's Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He then joined the Phantom regiment. In March 1945 in Holland and Belgium, he was a member of the No. 5 Squadron of the British Army's Special Air Service Brigade (also known as the Belgian SAS). After World War II, he continued his military career, first with the Kent Regiment in Niagara. He took further training and was stationed at: Camp Borden; Rivers, Shilo, and Churchill, Manitoba; Fort Benning, Georgia; Great Britain; Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; and Petawawa, Ontario. In April 1947 the Belgian government awarded Donnelly the Croix de Guerre avec palme for courage and bravery in the liberation of Belgium. He retired from the Canadian military in January 1951. For further information on Donnelly's military career, see: John Burman, "Bud's Role Pivotal in Fighting Nazis", Hamilton Spectator, 2 December 2005, pp. A1, A8; and Buzz Boudon, "Bud Donnelly, Soldier and War Hero 1920-2005", Toronto Globe and Mail, 6 January 2005, p. R5.
Donnelly was a real estate appraiser and broker in Hamilton. He married Jean Blackburn of Ottawa (who served as an ambulance driver in London, England during World War II). They had two children, Judy and Jennifer. Donnelly died of emphysema on 29 November 2005.
Dorset, Thomas Sackville, Earl of
Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, barrister, member of parliament, and poet. Sackville was born in 1536 at Buckhurst, Surrey and perhaps educated at Hart Hall, Oxford and St. John's College, Cambridge. He became a barrister in the Inner Temple and a member of parliament, 1558-1563. In 1567 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Buckhurst, and in 1608 was created Earl of Dorset. He served as an ambassador and then lord treasurer from 1599 until his death at his desk in Whitehall, London, 19 April 1608. Sackville was also an accomplished poet.
Robert (Bob) Edmund Dorsey was born in Hamilton, Ontario on December 4, 1919 to Annie and Josiah (Joe) Joshua Dorsey. Dorsey attended McMaster University and graduated with a BA in 1941. He excelled in tennis and badminton, winning the singles tennis championship in a district meet in 1939, and competing in badminton tournaments at the Thistle Club to become Hamilton’s singles champion for two consecutive years.
During his time at McMaster, Dorsey trained as a cadet in the McMaster Contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC). He completed his military training in 2 years and was named a 2nd lieutenant in 1942, enlisting in active service in May of the same year. While stationed at Camp Gordon, Dorsey completed the requirements to become a lieutenant. He then acted as a training centre instructor in Simcoe and Brantford. In 1943, he married Florence Kathleen Riley. Florence and Dorsey had one son, John Josiah, born February 1, 1944, whom Dorsey never had the opportunity to meet.
After being transferred to the Canadian Army (Active Force) Overseas, Dorsey boarded a ship for England, where he joined to the 5th Canadian Reinforcement Unit. He was assigned to the 7th Brigade Group, 3rd Canadian Division a month later. In the spring of 1944, Dorsey became a reinforcement officer for the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, a machine gun and mortar regiment designated for active service. Dorsey was involved in their pre-invasion training prior to the D-Day operation. He co-founded a frontline regimental newspaper called “The Rocket.” Dorsey was killed at Normandy on June 7, 1944. He was given full military honours in a burial ceremony at Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Reviers in Calvados, France.
Allan Burgess Dove, wire engineer and metallurgist, was born in Ayr, Scotland on 9 April 1909. He immigrated to Canada with his family in 1913. He attended Queen's University where he graduated with a BSc. in Chemical Engineering in 1932. Throughout his career Dove worked at Stelco's Canada Works in Hamilton, Ont. and Lachine, Que. as a Plant Engineer, Wire Mill Engineer, Superintendent, and Senior Development Metallurgist. An active member of the Wire Association International and other professional organizations, he edited the Steel Wire Handbook (4 vols., 1967-1980) and co-edited Ferrous Wire with Robert F. Dixon and Regina Robert (2 vols., 1990). In addition to his professional and scientific career, Dove was active in the Canadian military, beginning as a Private with the 91 Princess Louise Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada in 1925. After his retirement in 1974, Dove remained a consultant to Stelco as well as for other clients. He died on 24 July 1989.
Eric Dowling was born on 8 November 1907 in Sheffield, England. He emigrated to Canada in 1923 with his parents. He was educated at the Toronto (now the Royal) Conservatory. He worked at a number of churches in Ontario before he was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. George's Anglican Church in St. Catharines where he was to serve for thirty-eight years. He was a member of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, serving as president from 1948-1950 and a composer of both choral and organ works. He was one of the founders of the Niagara Peninsula Centre. Eric Dowling died on 14 February 1991 in St. Catharines.
